Raising doubts over the draft National Telecom Policy 2011?s vision of India becoming a telecom hardware super power by 2020, D Shivakumar, Nokia head for India, said that the proposed NTP failed to spell out how this would be achieved, at least on the handset side.
In an exclusive interview with FE, Shivakumar who moves to Dubai next year in his new role as head for Asia, Africa and Middle East, said, ?We need a lot more emphasis on chip set manufacturing to come anywhere near that status. Chip sets makes up 70% of a phone and we need to achieve full integration in the chip set manufacturing in order to be anywhere near the NTP?s target, but there is absolutely no mention of this in the draft NTP?11.?
Shivakumar?s comment comes almost two months after telecom minister Kapil Sibal announced the draft NTP 2011.
The new telecom policy which is being finalised by the department of telecommunications, aims to make India a telecom hardware superpower by 2020 so that 80% of the country?s demand would be met by local production. It is easy to understand the importance of promoting domestic production, given the increasing security concerns and the economic considerations. The domestic demand for telecom equipment is expected to touch R250,000 crore by the end of 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-2017).
But Shivakumar explains that the ambitious plan requires huge investments in a host of interlinked sectors such as power, aviation etc. ? In order to achieve the super power status you need to develop all the sectors involved in creating a successful value chain but most of all the labour laws need to be made more flexible and the tax structure needs to be rationalised,? he said.
Nokia was the global telecom firm to set up a facility in the country in Chennai in January 2006. Its production facility crossed the 500 million mark in May this year.
